A Couple Of Things – Compressing Screens, Rolling Engagements, and the Quiet Calm of ASMR
On the slow fade of ‘social’ in social media and the rise of sonic intimacy through ASMR.
Once there was Social Networking. Then it became Social Media. Now, it’s just media, but no one’s calling it that just yet!
This piece takes a peek into human behaviour through compressing screens on one side, and on the other, how ASMR is the elixir in a zillion veins. Read on!
Watch. Don’t Talk.
I was reading this fine piece by Derek Thompson titled ‘Everything Is Television’, and I tipped my hat to the power of the human neural network in shaping newer trends. The article is fascinating and can send one down multiple rabbit holes. Yes, that can be a thing—multiple meandering streams that are distinct from each other, and not stressing out a single rabbit. Alternatively, maybe we’re better served as ‘earthworms in solitude’ to keep up with our obsessive devilry to scratch our brains, and unearth mystique connections.
As of 2025, the oldest millennials would have spent 63% of their lives social networking—yes, as a verb, online. They called it ‘social networking’ for people to connect, engage, and have a conversation with one another on the internet. It did start as that in the late 1990s, and then sometime in the late 2000s ‘social networking’ gave way to ‘social media’, and rightly so. Content robbed the networking charm. Comments are increasingly the most distant cousins of views. Aptly filed by Meta, and captured by Derek, even I don’t think any of the platforms that we have known as ‘social media’ all this while is social any longer. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok are optimizing similar content. LinkedIn is trying hard to be different, but it’s at the mercy of its dwellers, who want to show and tell every smallest interaction. Every platform is becoming the other, and therefore in essence, everything is television—true to the title of Derek’s piece.
If we go back to the days of traditional television, it felt like the television was bringing a living room closer, and complementing existing family conversations around the dinner table. Over time, it was the only voice in the living room. Couches became isolated cubicles. Dinner and table became unrelated courses. The evolution of social media is like déjà vu to the television era, and with AI, we’re witnessing a revolution at a different scale. Recently, when it was announced that Gemini was coming to Google TV and other OEM brands like LG and Samsung, I told myself the days of looking sideways for conversations with people in the living room are numbered.
Derek links out to this essay by Will Tavlin in his piece, where Will calls out Netflix’s core focus was to reward mindlessness in the DVD rental era, and they didn’t care if anyone liked the content or not. As long as the customers were able to house the DVDs, Netflix was saving on the delivery and storage charges. When it comes to original content in the online subscription era, Netflix is catering to the forever distracted audience. Derek goes on to say, “Perhaps a great deal of television is not meant to absorb our attention, at all, but rather to dab away at it, to soak up tiny droplets of our sensory experience while our focus dances across other screens. You might even say that much television is not even made to be watched at all. It is made to flow.” Well, I feel my partner and I may be misfits in Netflix’s target group as we pause the show every time we head to drop our dishes in the sink post dinner. The flow is broken, but the curiosity isn’t.
What Is Content Doing To You?
Earlier this year, my partner created an ASMR Instagram Reel for her small business. I had heard the term for the first time despite spending a few years in the digital content sphere. I was trying hard to figure what ASMR stood for, and thought if I knew its full-form, I may remember. But I failed both ways. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a sensory emotional response often characterized by a tingling sensation leading to a pleasant or relaxed feeling. The term was coined by Jennifer Allen, a Cybersecurity practitioner in the year 2010.
In 2017, Journalist and Writer, Libby Copeland summed up ASMR’s early stages in her piece for the Smithsonian Magazine where she wrote, “The burgeoning Internet phenomenon was so new, it didn’t even have a name. It was so strange and hard to describe that many people felt creepy trying. It resided at the outer edge of respectability: a growing collection of YouTube videos featuring people doing quiet, methodical activities like whispering, turning magazine pages and tapping their fingers. Some viewers reported that these videos could elicit the most pleasurable sensations: a tingling feeling at the scalp and spine, coupled with euphoria and an almost trance-like relaxation.”
Scientists feel that ASMR can become a medically approved therapy someday, but till then, it’s an interesting area of research, fighting hard for its independent place. Many researchers consider ASMR as a part of synesthesia. Some of the leading content creators and curators view ASMR as a contemporary art, and not just a YouTube-driven cultural undercurrent. I was fascinated to learn of ASMR being a large internet movement—with millions of subscribers and views on YouTube, and #ASMR being one of the most used hashtags on TikTok with billions of views and mentions. Billie Eilish is hailed as an ASMR icon, and I’m curious to understand if there were incremental revenue gains for Ikea post their 25-minute creative experiment. While not everyone would be ASMR sensitive in the world, nor would every brand see the value in prioritizing sensations; here are a couple of aspects to note:
Returns on Intimacy: ASMR content tickles the nerves, letting algorithms reward watch time, saves, and bedtime viewing. Meta, YouTube, TikTok and other emerging video platforms are encashing tingling sensations.
Sonic Design and Functional Utility: ASMR collapses product, sound design, and storytelling into one frame. To aid sleep, to bring calm, to enable focus—content that ‘does something’ travels farther, especially in overstimulated environments.
I’m certainly not ASMR sensitive, but hope some day I get there to run an eight-hour stretch of deep sleep. Till then, I’m off to my next scroll.
Listen Up
Ilomilo by Bilie Eilish from her 2019 debut album ‘WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO’.
I’m forever on the lookout for tunes old and new, You can check out my expanding Trove Of Tunes that I’m curating in a Spotify playlist.
Cheers,
Shri